DwarfCast 175 – Re-Disc-overy: Series VII

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Posted by on 22nd January 2025, 08:43

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“A side-swipe at oven chips”

As we enter the twentieth anniversary year of one of the most seminal short films of all time, it’s an opportunity for us to reflect on our own pasts as we explore the The Movie: Yeah No Yeah No DVD, which features among its bonus material the entirety of Red Dwarf VII. It’s the most personal trip down memory lane in our Re-Disc-overy series so far, as we not only commentate on the fan films, but also reveal all the behind the scenes details of the haphazard production processes, cringe at our past selves’ incompetence, and consider how one simple film-making competition ultimately changed all three of our lives.

But that’s not all, as there’s an awful lot to discuss in the rest of this three disc package too. Join us as we attempt to make amends for our past criticism of someone who really didn’t deserve it, reminisce about the time Grant Naylor Productions threatened us with legal action, piece together Chris Barrie’s whereabouts during the bits of Series VII he wasn’t in, reveal the link between this DVD and the world of gardening, and begin to assemble our complete history of Red Dwarf via the medium of cancelling every single person involved.

DwarfCast 175 – Re-Disc-overy: Series VII (335 MB)

Show notes

96 comments on “DwarfCast 175 – Re-Disc-overy: Series VII”

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  • This is almost very timely as I went a bit insane over Christmas and watched every DVD and read (or skim read in the case of the programme guides, survival manual and Log no. 1996) every book. Still, series VII is always worth investigating and yes I still laughed heartily at the movie Yeah No Yeah No.

  • Not yet halfway through and I’ve already laughed out loud several times, most notably at the nepo baby joke.

  • Great stuff. The section on How Do They Do That was a particularly nostalgic throwback as I used to enjoy the show anyway but loved the fact that Red Dwarf was on it. It set my expectations for model work in VII way too high.

  • I have come to appreciate Series 7 more over the years. Except for Stoke Me A Clipper. That one for me is the first sign of the show delving into cringe comedy.

  • Twenty years ago?? I don’t think I was even 17 yet. I remember going to the audio room at my community college and recording my (terrible) narration/voiceover with the jankiest equipment imaginable but somehow figuring out a way to make it work. It was an absolute thrill, and I’ll never watch it again.

  • About time, you lazy cunts. Absolutely throwing this on tonight.

    Twenty years ago?? I don’t think I was even 17 yet.

    For the sake of your mental health I won’t tell you how old I was 20 years ago. You’ll have to rely on a past instance of me mentioning being barely 13 when Back to Earth aired to figure it out.

  • Lovely stuff, as always. I remember watching Yeah No Yeah No at the time and thinking “yeah ok that was mildly amusing”. Knowing a lot more about the behind the scenes of the movie, GNP, and you lot, it’s much funnier now. I’d love to know what Doug made of him reading one of Rob’s books.

    I remember that episode of How Do They Do That? being on and excitedly tuning in for the Red Dwarf section. Great times.

    Weirdly, I have no memories of this DVD from the time. The others all occupy a particular place in my memory, but don’t recall getting this one at all.

  • I watched Yeah No Yeah No with only the context provided by TOS as I didn’t stumble upon G&T until the Back To Earth instant reaction Dwarfcasts. I think it was going back to the Meltdown commentary when the penny dropped and I realised what a bunch of loonies you were and that there was no one in my actual life I could talk to about Forbes Mason’s portrayal of Stan Laurel or old Lee & Herring sketches.

  • I’m still not seeing this episode published. It took a few hours last time for it to update but this seems like something else 

  • Oh, so it was a mistake. I’d just assumed that you were making us directly download an MP3 file as a nostalgic throwback to the time the Series VII DVD was released.

  • I’d just assumed that you were making us directly download an MP3 file as a nostalgic throwback to the time the Series VII DVD was released.

  • Good stuff, even as a direct download. Pod-catcher apps, who needs ’em? If Podbean was really a good pod-catcher it would have caught the podcast in spite of the wordpress issue, that’s what I say.

    It’s amazing how much this DVD release intersected with G&T history, both with the Identity Within script incident and the fan films. And now thanks to the Series 1-VIII Blu ray set, The Movie: Yeah, No, Yeah, No is preserved in glorious HD despite being recorded at 120p or something.

    I can’t remember exactly when I got the Series VII DVD, but it can’t have been until the early 10s, possibly even post Series X.

    I would have got it at least a few years earlier than that, but because I was a child at the time, I was generally depending on birthday and Christmas gifts to collect Red Dwarf on DVD. For the occasion where I asked for Series V-VIII, a well meaning relative got me Just The Shows Vol. 2 instead of the full fat releases. I was a bit disappointed, but I was far too polite to replace a present. And it’s not like I didn’t watch the fuck out of those discs regardless. Only slightly irksome to look at my DVD display and see “RI DW” followed by a completely normal DVD box for several years.

    On that note, I’m excited to eventually see how much discussion you can wring out of “Re-Disc-overy: Just The Shows”.

  • Enjoying this listening Marathon. epic of a podcast. Going to have to do this one in two sittings.

    . 

    Got as far as Identity Within.   Could we forgive the difference in cat’s reaction to the female cats in Promised Land due to the fact that these ones are so religious? He wasnt bothered by the cat religion in series 1, so maybe that makes him less interested in these devoted cult following female cats, especially if he knows they have rules about not being cool etc. He’s only interested in six or seven females cats to settle down with who are post-religion in their attitudes to sexual partners. 

  • preserved in glorious HD despite being recorded at 120p or something. 

    I was amused watching the film, for much the same reasons International Debris stated, but laughed about as much at this comment, in light of having just heard Ian’s memories about the picture resolution issues.

  • The bounteous extras sort of almost persuaded me to buy this one, but putting my money behind Red Dwarf VII was too off-putting. I considered the incomplete spine art a sort of protest. I can tut at the shit raw CGI on YouTube nowadays anyway.

  •  Could we forgive the difference in cat’s reaction to the female cats in Promised Land due to the fact that these ones are so religious? He wasnt bothered by the cat religion in series 1, so maybe that makes him less interested in these devoted cult following female cats, especially if he knows they have rules about not being cool etc. He’s only interested in six or seven females cats to settle down with who are post-religion in their attitudes to sexual partners.

    Well really The Cat isn’t just interested in Female humanoid Cats. He is interested in humanoid women in general. its just difficult to acknowledge the more times you keep bringing in female supporting casts. So its just easier to ignore it everytime.

    After all for a long time, from at least series 1-6 the Dwarfers don’t actually get much interaction with supporting cast. So it did feel like The Cats desires were more justified.

  • Just been looking back at my old Livejournal entries from back in the day to see if I wrote anything interesting during my time creating my own fan film.

    May 18th 2005: All the filming is done. It’s actually looking really good now – the stuff we’ve done in the last couple of days has been really good, though I still secretly wish I could have been involved with the Observation Dome film. Not to worry. We’ve as good a chance as anyone…

  • Can’t remember seeing this before, but yeah, good grief…

    Can somebody please make a picture of the bbc cgi rimmer experience head now using their 2025 graphic talents or AI or something, but so it now looks just like that but Rimmer’s face is Chris Barrie photo realistic.  Just to make me laugh. Thanks 

  • It looks like one of those inexplicably weird experimental CG shorts from the 80s.

    It looks like something cyberzone rejected. 

  • Just been looking back at my old Livejournal entries from back in the day to see if I wrote anything interesting during my time creating my own fan film.

    May 18th 2005: All the filming is done. It’s actually looking really good now – the stuff we’ve done in the last couple of days has been really good, though I still secretly wish I could have been involved with the Observation Dome film. Not to worry. We’ve as good a chance as anyone…

    What was your film SI and is it online in full anywhere? 

  • Great Dwarfcast. Is series 8 the last Re:disc-overy? Or will it continue beyond. 

    I’ve listened in full now, apart from the commentary bit that I will listen to tonight along with my disc from my competition winning fully signed by G&T edition of series VII which I treasure like a cat’s shiny thing.

  • Can somebody please make a picture of the bbc cgi rimmer experience head now using their 2025 graphic talents or AI or something, but so it now looks just like that but Rimmer’s face is Chris Barrie photo realistic.  Just to make me laugh. Thanks

  • Great Dwarfcast. Is series 8 the last Re:disc-overy? Or will it continue beyond. 

    They say at the end that it will continue. The public simply wouldn’t stand for G&T to not make a Re-Disc-overy episode for Just The Smegs.

  • Bodysnatcher is a lock, for sure. Not sure about anything after that but it’s probably a safe bet that the Dave era stuff will get some sort of attention, even if it’s after a bit of a break.

  • They say at the end that it will continue. The public simply wouldn’t stand for G&T to not make a Re-Disc-overy episode for Just The Smegs.

    Re-UMD-overy

  • Oh, I’ve mentioned this before – I think – but Danny is always at a lower volume than Ian or Jon on Dwarfcasts and this causes issues when I’m listening to the podcast in the car or late at night with the volume really low. It’s not necessarily that noticeable in a quiet listening environment at a normal volume, but I semi-regularly have to spend long stretches of time driving and Dwarfcast commentaries are one of my favorite things to put on for that, but driving on the highway is very noisy so I gotta turn it up to hear Danny properly and it makes the others too loud.

    Basically, I’m asking for nothing more than a remaster of the last hundred or so Dwarfcasts with the volume corrected and Cappsy dubbed over with another actor.

  •  Basically, I’m asking for nothing more than a remaster of the last hundred or so Dwarfcasts with the volume corrected and Cappsy dubbed over with another actor.

    Brian Blessed, surely. 

  • My other hobby while driving long distance is calling Cappsy on Discord, which is like listening to Dwarfcast if it were about the Mega Drive.

  • Correction for the music discussion. Howard only had the orchestra for Tikka and Stoke and it was pretty much all used. It was the other episodes that lost most of their music, which were synth like usual.

    In fact, only two cues from the orchestral session (I’m presuming they only had a single day with them) went unused. The first one is some tense militaristic music for the first Oswald assassination attempt. The second is harder to place, it’s a brassy pompous march. My only guess is it scored the scene of Kryten explaining the Kennedy impeachment story on his chest monitor. Both of these were replaced with library music.

    The cues that were used were:

    1: The climactic assassination cue of Tikka
    2: The 4 or so brilliantly bombastic cues that make up the opening set piece of Stoke
    3: Lister jousting (one of the small amount of still unreleased cues)
    4: And finally the cue for Ace’s casket joining the other Ace Rimmers (imagine if the visuals matched the quality of Howard’s score)

    So altogether only around 8 minutes of music with the orchestra. And about 35 minutes of synth music for the rest of the season, that went mostly unused. Including a handful from the first two episodes as well.

  • My other hobby while driving long distance is calling Cappsy on Discord, which is like listening to Dwarfcast if it were about the Mega Drive.

    Have you been having conversations with other people again, Cappsy?! HMMM?!?!

  • I’m fuc-

    Actually, let’s not.

    “Words Starting with FUC: Fucaceae, fucaceous, fucalean, Fucales, fuchsia, fuchsias, fuchsin, fuchsine, fuchsines, fuchsinophil, fuchsinophile, …”

  • And finally the cue for Ace’s casket joining the other Ace Rimmers (imagine if the visuals matched the quality of Howard’s score)

    I’ve never hated this sequence as much as some people do. It’s a bit naff and clunky but it gets the point across. And yes, the music is beautiful.

  • What was your film SI and is it online in full anywhere?

    It was called ‘Afternoon of the Polymorph’.

    It’s not online for two reasons:

    1) Rights were signed away to GNP.

    2) It’s awful. I’ve got a VHS cassette with the full film, all outtakes, and every other thing that was committed to film on it. No-one needs to see that.

  • What was your film SI and is it online in full anywhere?

    It was called ‘Afternoon of the Polymorph’.
    It’s not online for two reasons:
    1) Rights were signed away to GNP.
    2) It’s awful. I’ve got a VHS cassette with the full film, all outtakes, and every other thing that was committed to film on it. No-one needs to see that.

    Two very valid reasons. 

    I would still like to see it. Fair enough if I Never will. 

    I went to a dimension jump where they showed more of the fan films I think. The one will the sentient sugar puff sandwhich I think I saw in full. 

  • If you uploaded it to YouTube and GNP ordered it taken down, that would at least be concrete evidence that GNP is still active enough to employ 1 person.

  • Just listened to the final bit of the dwarfcast along with watching the fan films section of the DVD. Most enjoyable listen. 

    Si, I saw a bit of your polymorph, looked very recognisably a bit of dwarf fandom that. I’ll count that tiny peak as the intriguing trailer. …


    Really heart warming to hear you guys talk about how the film made your friendships. I can relate to that.

    The Movie: Yeah No was one of the things that showed me what fans can do with creativity centred around their love of something. Alongside a few other low budget cult examples such as Kevin Smith’s Clerks. The style of fandom humour in your film showed me I could do something with humour and make a fan film about the band I follow “Madness”. What began as a no budget idea for YouTube became a film screened as a side show at one of the bands weekenders. At the screening weekend I met the woman who later became my wife. In the alternate universe you speak of where you never made your fan film, it’s possible we might never have met at the weekender, with chaos theory its equally possible we still did but she would have had a beard. 






  • “The creators of Red Dwarf sponsored a fan film contest of their own in 2005, inspired by an earlier fan film production in 2001 called Red Dwarf – The Other Movie, with a fairly wide remit ranging from fictional stories set in the Red Dwarf universe to documentaries about the show and its fandom. The two winning shorts, Attack of the Giant Hand Monster and The Movie: Yeah, No, Yeah, No, were featured in their entirety as bonus features on the Series VIII DVD release, along with a montage of clips from the runner-up entries and a short intro clip from Red Dwarf – The Other Movie. This made them among the first fan films to be commercially released by a property’s original creators.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_film#Authorized_fan_films

  • Hey all, I’m the guy who made the other fan film Attack of the Giant Hand Monster. I haven’t watched it since I got the free copy of Series VII. Don’t really have many stories about the project, it was shot on our kitchen table, and that’s my hand running around. Whole thing is a bit cringe to watch now. Here’s some props I managed to recover from a dusty box a while back.

  • Hey all, I’m the guy who made the other fan film Attack of the Giant Hand Monster. I haven’t watched it since I got the free copy of Series VII. Don’t really have many stories about the project, it was shot on our kitchen table, and that’s my hand running around. Whole thing is a bit cringe to watch now. Here’s some props I managed to recover from a dusty box a while back.

    Click to Edit – 4 minutes and 14 seconds

    Hey all, I’m the guy who made the other fan film Attack of the Giant Hand Monster. I haven’t watched it since I got the free copy of Series VII. Don’t really have many stories about the project, it was shot on our kitchen table, and that’s my hand running around. Whole thing is a bit cringe to watch now. Here’s some props I managed to recover from a dusty box a while back.

    SaveCancelDelete4 minutes and 14 seconds

  • I like your film James.  It’s a winner.

    Everyone, A big hand for James. Oh you’ve already got one. 

  • I like your film James.  It’s a winner.

    Everyone, A big hand for James. Oh you’ve already got one.

  • Finally got this listened to. Excellent first DwarfCast of the year. I belly-laughed at Cappsy’s idea of what Gene Hunt would make of oven chips, and his summary of the baby Lister story.

    One thing I remember about the VII DVD is that one of the links from the Xtended video is missing, namely Kryten’s introduction to the Rimmer Munchkin song. I probably didn’t notice at the time (typically Ian did and mentioned it in his review), but I do remember it being included somewhere on a future release, probably Bodysnatcher, maybe as an Easter egg or just tacked onto the end of something else. No doubt it’ll be covered in the relevant Re-Disc-overy.

  • But I keep seeing it! Over and over! I commented on it to people even before this instance.

    Maybe it’s burn in on your retinas 

  • Thankfully, I only use my phone to go on the site these days and no photos appear this way at the top.

    Though now that I’ve shown this, I fear I run the risk of G&T finding a way around this to successfully traumatize iPhone wankers like myself with that horrific image.  

  • Thankfully, I only use my phone to go on the site these days and no photos appear this way at the top.                                                 

  • But I keep seeing it! Over and over! I commented on it to people even before this instance.

    It’s in the super common folder, along with the Seb one. In my defense, it’s definitely what he would’ve wanted.

  • Thankfully, I only use my phone to go on the site these days and no photos appear this way at the top.

    Though now that I’ve shown this, I fear I run the risk of G&T finding a way around this to successfully traumatize iPhone wankers like myself with that horrific image.

    Tip your phone sideways into landscape mode to experience the full horror.

  • Thankfully, I only use my phone to go on the site these days and no photos appear this way at the top.

    Though now that I’ve shown this, I fear I run the risk of G&T finding a way around this to successfully traumatize iPhone wankers like myself with that horrific image.
    Tip your phone sideways into landscape mode to experience the full horror.

    It’s just like that old beer app from the first days of smart phones 

  • It’s in the super common folder, along with the Seb one. In my defense, it’s definitely what he would’ve wanted.

    I feel validated that Cappsy engineered my descent into insanity rather than it happening naturally.

  • Don’t worry though, this won’t traumatise other mobile users as this only appears for your account.

  • Given that it’s possible to change the experience on a user by user basis how are we to know any of us are having the same experience?

  • Given that it’s possible to change the experience on a user by user basis how are we to know any of us are having the same experience?

    If they were really evil they could even change the Smegle thread to make it seem to all other users that I shit out two days in a row.

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